Credit for this one goes to Don Younger, publican of the Horse Brass Pub in Portland.
Exhibit A: Last week’s Session, in which the guys at Hop Talk challenged bloggers to write about atmosphere. We’re talking about dozens of folks who take the time to write about beer several times a week.
And what did they focus […]

Greg Clow has made the call and the theme for the next session, Aug. 3, is Fruit Beer.
Aside from the stipulation that it be a beer brewed/augmented with fruit (or fruit juice or extract), there are no other rules or guidelines. Anything is fair game, from a tart and funky Kriek or Framboise, to a […]

Just a quick thought for the weekend.
Recurring questions that resulted from the epidemic of lists in the last week (yes, you can blame me) were which came first, which were truly influential and eventually which were innovative.
In that light I found a little Q & A with Jonathan Schwartz is the CEO and President of […]

Gotta love that headline. It appeared at Earthtimes.org in what was basically a pointer to a longer story in The Hill, a Washington newspaper, about the House Small Brewers Caucus.
The 35 members of the caucus (they hope to have 100 by the end of the legislative session) promote small breweries, trade beer-making advice and drink […]

And now - taking a break from our swim in the pool of listmania - we return to our regularly scheduled conversation about what makes the beer we drink different.
So time for Barley Part II (you knew I had another old image I was itching to show you).
In his Great Beers of Belgium, Michael Jackson […]

This just in from up North . . .
Stephen Beaumont gives us the Canadian Craft Brewing’s Influential Top Ten.
- John Mitchell
- Paul Hadfield
- Kevin Keefe
- Jim Brickman
- Charles McLean
- Alan Pugsley (I do have to inject he might be in my U.S. Top 10)
- John Sleeman
- Mitchell Taylor
- Ed McNally
- Andre Dion
I like […]

Rick Sellers of Pacific Brew News Blog has taken our ‘10 Most’ conversation another direction:
Ten People Who Shaped the US Beer Scene.
Certainly a conversation I plan to jump into in his comments section after I get a little work done. (OK, I had to leave one right off - Michael Jackson.)
Here’s his list:
1 - Fritz […]

Hip, Hip, Hooray.
Jeff Alworth has risen to the task and given us another regional list, calling his Oregon’s Influential Ten.
I love that Henry Weinhard Private Reserve is at the top of the list. And I don’t know how often people in Portland talk about Cartwright but I’m guessing they should more often. Jeff writes, “No […]

Although Al nicely recapped Session #5 as it was happening, but there’s also a wrap-up I neglected to point to.
Early on, it became quite clear that there was a nearly universal theme as to what made for a good beer drinking atmosphere: people. Just about everyone talked about how much having good people around them […]

A few years ago a judge rather boldly wrote “Crisp Maris Otter?” in comments about an old ale I entered in a homebrew competition. I did, in fact, use Maris Otter, though it happened to be malted by Thomas Fawcett rather than Crisp.
I was nonetheless impressed.
I thought of this because British UK maltster Robin Appel […]